Barcelona Encounter

Compact Barcelona is a bright, fiery star lapped by the Mediterranean, a magnet to everyone from art-loving beach bums to business execs with a weakness for sunny downtime. Its a city in motion, constantly reinventing itself.

Barcelona manages the trick of merging past with future into an effervescent present. At its core lies one of Europes best-preserved Gothic-era medieval city centres. That priceless heritage lent Gaud and Co the historical foundation and inspiration for some of their zaniest architectural creations centuries later. Their adventurousness is in the citys DNA local and international architects continue to unleash their unfettered fantasies here. As a skyline symbol, Gauds La Sagrada Famlia has stiff competition in Jean Nouvels shimmering Torre Agbar.

The heady mix of Gothic monuments and contemporary skyscrapers is accompanied by a bevy of world-class museums that take you from the wonders of giant Romanesque frescoes to the playfulness of Joan Mir, from pre-Columbian South American gold to early Picasso.

All that culture fuels the appetite and at times the entire city seems to be out to lunch (or dinner). Thousands of restaurants offer an incredible palette for the palate, from traditional Catalan cooking to the last word in 21st-century nueva cocina espaola kookiness. A plethora of tippling establishments and dance clubs also spreads in a hedonistic arc across the entire city. Drop into century-old taverns or glam it up in bright new seaside bars. Shoppers, meanwhile, may never make it to a museum. Phalanxes of one-off boutiques compete with armies of global-brand-name stores.

Barcelonins have a reputation for hard work, but everywhere you look people seem to be having fun. On the waterfront, Rollerbladers glide past domino-playing pensioners, sun-seekers, windsurfers and sailors. Skateboarders practise their art in motion outside the Macba, temple to contemporary creation, and mountain-bikers blaze trails in the Collserola park.

Barcelona is an intoxicating ride. Once is unlikely to be enough.

Jamn (cured ham) for sale in atmospheric Grcia
GUY MOBERLY

It is Spains most visited sight and the blinking thing isnt even finished! For many, that is part of the attraction. If you have been to Barcelona before, you have probably already visited Antoni Gauds La Sagrada Famlia church. But that was last time, wasnt it? A work in progress, it is never quite the same.

To enter La Sagrada Famlia is to crawl around inside one of the 20th centurys most eccentric architectural minds. Gaud planned three facades, dedicated to the Nativity (largely done in his lifetime), the Passion (finished in 1976) and the Glory; the last is the main one, on which work is now under way. Each is to be crowned by four towers, representing the 12 Apostles. Four higher towers will symbolise the Evangelists, while a colossal 170m-high central tower, flanked by another bearing a statue of the Virgin, will represent Christ.

There are two ways to experience the majesty of this divine construction site. The first is by looking upwards. The Nativity facade tells the story of Christs birth and also represents the virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity. Local plant species and the nearby Montserrat mountain range inspired much of the curvaceous sculpture. The Passion facade also invites you to look skyward, following the story of Christs passion and death. Inside the five-nave interior, you cannot fail to follow the sinewy lines of the forest of treelike pillars upwards, where they splay outwards in a canopy of concrete branches to hold up the roof.

Then you can do the opposite. Lifts and stairs allow you to ascend a tower of each facade and look down over the splendid work below and the city around it, and perhaps feel a breath of the heavenly inspiration that touched Gaud.

Get here as early in the morning as you can to avoid the worst of the crowds. Photography fans might want to turn up before opening time to catch the early sunlight on the exterior. An alternative is seeing it lit up at night (lights are usually out by midnight).

for more information.

Exterior of Gaudis Temple de la Sagrada Familia
JOHN HAY

Perhaps the best time to wander down is dawn on a crisp sunny day. The street cleaners have been through, the revellers are tucked up in bed and everything is strangely quiet.

By day and night, multitudes stream along this tree-lined pedestrian boulevard (flanked by two clogged traffic lanes), a stage for street performers (from flamenco dancers to fire-eaters and more human statues than you could knock over in one go), pickpockets, three-cups-and-a-ball tricksters and more. Rip-off pavement cafes, Australian pubs and newsstands bursting with porn add to the local colour, although Barcelonins are largely noticeable by their absence. As day turns to night, streetwalkers of all persuasions come out to play at the lower end of the boulevard, and many out-of-towners become more vocal as they revel into the wee hours.

La Rambla gets its name from a seasonal stream ( raml in Arabic) that once ran here. By medieval times it was known as the Cagalell (from caga, meaning shit). This open-air sewer was filled in by the 18th century. La Rambla changes name five times along its 1.25km length, and if you can take your eyes off the human spectacle there is plenty to see, from Plaa de Catalunya to the .

You may well not even notice the modest Canaletes drinking fountain at the top end of the street, but this symbolic spot is the focus of celebrations for FC Barcelona football fans, who gather here whenever their side wins a famous victory.

Just north of Carrer del Carme, the .

Aside from the market, one thing that does attract Barcelona folks to La Rambla is the , the wax museum.